Backstage glimpses with Boston Lyric Opera

Schoenberg juggled multiple national and religious identities during his long creative life: Austrian, German, Jewish, Protestant, American. Through all these dizzying dislocations and re-identifications, however, Schoenberg retained his single most important identity: as a composer.

Around 400 high school and college students across greater Boston attended BLO’s Final Dress Rehearsal of The Barber of Seville. For many, it was their first experience with opera. Many of the students were surprised and delighted that it was laugh-out-loud funny!

In January, 1816, Rossini was up against a wall, and the person who put him there was himself. At the end of 1815, the composer was in Rome and the director of Rome’s Teatro Argentina asked him on short notice to compose a new opera for February: the opera that would become The Barber of Seville.

“Rosina is an old friend, but she never gets boring,” says mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack. “To sing the same part all the time would get boring if nothing ever changed, but each new production, each new director, each new concept makes everything different.”

Strolling through the streets of the city as he flits about from house to house and job to job, Figaro enjoys a freewheeling lifestyle limited only by his own imagination. The circumstances of Rosina, the opera’s principal female character, could hardly be more different.

BARBER’s story celebrates the lower classes, democratizing opera through sophisticated showpieces for scheming servants and deceptive suitors. Composers, librettists, actors, and singers could mock the complex love intrigues of the upper class and lay bare the social injustices of their time.